“Il m’a fallu beaucoup de temps et beaucoup de boomeranging douloureux de mes attentes pour parvenir à réaliser : que je ne suis personne d’autre que moi-même. Mais il fallait d’abord que je découvre que je suis un homme invisible !” – L’Homme invisible – prologue – Ralph Ellison 1952
First exhibition in Europe by photographer Ruddy Roye (born in Jamaica 1969, lives between New York and Cleveland) When Living is A Protest was scheduled for February, Ruddy Roye reminding us that this month corresponds to Black History Month – Black History Month or also called African-American History Month **
The title given by the artist to this series that he started more than 10 years ago: When Living is a Protest expresses his painful questions about the place of African-Americans in the United States.
This series attempts to make visible the invisibles of the American continent. It is for Ruddy Roye, a mission, as a photographic artist. Traveling through cities from New York to New Orleans, the Polaris gallery presents a selection, chosen with the photographer, from a few years of this journey.
What may surprise us in the work of Ruddy Roye is the way the photographed protagonists look at him. These are not photographs taken on the run in the city or the countryside. Ruddy Roye first talks with the people he would like to represent. They then talk about their daily lives, the difficulty of living, their often precarious situation. By taking the time to get to know each other, it is only after this mutual understanding that Ruddy Roye triggers the camera, as in an outdoor studio. Roye describes in a very poetic way in one of his texts (each photograph is accompanied by a text written by the artist that we encourage you to read): “I pass their stories between the tip of my index finger and the palm of my left hand, carefully breaking them like dried twigs, burning the courage of their souls into pure human beings.”
Because in this work full of humanism, it is really about the power of the photographer to give back to these people encountered by chance, dignity. Ruddy Roye recalls in one of his texts that as a photographer he prefers to be more interested in people rather than the things that define them.
The timelessness of When Living is a Protest is above all due to Roye’s treatment and biases. Like its title, one might believe the writing to be simple, but if Roye focuses on his characters and the ideals they convey, he strives to tell the story of their evils and their resignation. Humbly placing himself at eye level, he lets us hear their voices through the camera because “It is in this frame that we find the little pieces of magic that sum up their story “and shows that, ultimately, we all speak the same language.
If there is idealism, it remains fragile, because this work is a discourse which covers a wide range of subjects, going well beyond the simple field of poverty and racism. The past, that experienced by parents and their ancestors, always haunts and cannot be detached from the present. This work simply asks us to see the humanity in each look that the artist has immortalized. If there is idealism, it remains fragile, because this work is a discourse which covers a wide range of subjects, going well beyond the simple field of poverty and racism. The past, that experienced by parents and their ancestors, always haunts and cannot be detached from the present. This work simply asks us to see the humanity in each look that the artist has immortalized. If these looks can move us, it is because Roye has this incredible ability to understand human nature and to touch universality. An oeuvre as a universal message which unites and questions this humanity, broken and filled with doubts, resigned, but claiming its right to exist.
This body of work aims to make people hear, show and denounce the current condition of African-Americans. Without false exaltation and without hatred. Simply honoring photography. An essay in social iconology, as an invitation given to the viewer to be able to question the discourse of images differently. And it is this thematic approach revealing the commitment of the photographer, which should allow us to question the world in which we live.
“strip me of my color and I’m your uncle, I’m your brother, I am your neighbor”: Ruddy Roye – CBS NEWS interview.
** Annual commemoration of the history of the African diaspora. Fifty years after the promulgation of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution abolishing slavery, African-American historian Carter Woodson and Pastor Jesse Moorland founded the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, intended to research on the history of African Americans. They started Negro History Week the second week of February 1926? Due to the coincidence of the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln on February 12 and Frederick Douglass on February 14. Two dates celebrated since the end of the 19th century by black American communities.
Ruddy Roye : When Living is A Protest
January 27 – February 27, 2024
Galerie Polaris
15 rue des Arquebusiers
75003 Paris
www.galeriepolaris.fr
